Holy Smoke loads cremated ashes into ammunition

The latest way you can honor loved ones is to have them locked and loaded, their cremated remains inserted into live ammunition by an Alabama company called Holy Smoke.

“This isn’t a joke. It’s a job that we take very seriously. This is a reverent business. We take the utmost care in what we do and show the greatest respect for the remains,” said Clem Parnell, the conservation enforcement officer who co-founded the company, in a USA Today article.

Holy Smoke markets itself as a memorial service for hunters that’s cheaper and more eco-friendly than large-scale funeral arrangements.

Families mail a pound of cremated ashes to the company to use in the shot shells, which are returned within 48 hours for hunting use or display. Prices start at $850 for 250 shotgun shells or 100 rifle rounds.

“Holy Smoke realized there was a need for an individual’s choice in how his or her life could be remembered or celebrated. What better way to be remembered than in a celebration of a life well spent,” the company’s website says. “Now you can have the peace of mind that you can continue to protect your home and family even after you are gone.”

Although most Americans still prefer burial, the proportion of Americans choosing cremation had been expected to rise to about a third by 2010, compared to just 5 percent four decades before, according to research in the book Death and Religion in a Changing World.

“Many faith communities have adapted their funeral liturgies to the absence of a body and burial and devised new liturgical forms appropriate for cases of cremation,” wrote religious studies professor Kathleen Garces-Foley. “Grieving family and friends have also created rituals surrounding cremation, such as scattering ashes at sea or installing a plaque on a park bench, and new industries have formed to facilitate these rituals.”

Holy Smoke is a particularly niche and unusual such industry, creating new, customized traditions for modern-day memorials. The company began this summer and sent out its first orders last month, according to USA Today.